UUA Presidential Candidate Forum, Laurel Hallman, Opening Speech;

This post features UUA candidate for president, the Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman, in her opening speech. This is a new blog which provides a neutral territory to discuss the platforms of the two UUA candidates, Peter Morales and Laurel Hallman.

Below follows both the transcript and the video portion. The original video is now back online at the official UUA site, albeit without Question One.

http://www.uua.org/events/generalassembly/2008/112314.shtml

Rev. Morales’ opening speech was posted in the prior post (because he spoke first). All other segments of the debate will follow in the coming days.

To view just the segment with Rev. Hallman’s opening speech click below.

Description:

Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman  gives her opening speech at the UUA Candidate forum, explaining why she is running for UUA president. The complete transcript of the June 28, 2008 forum with the other candidate, Rev. Peter Morales, can be downloaded here: uuacandidateforum

Campaign website: http://HallmanForUUAPresident.com

Opening Speech Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman

“To build a church that shall be free!”

We sing it, we celebrate it in our affirmations and covenants: the free church, a home for the free spirit in which we can live and move and have our being.

In Dallas, people often come to our church and weep, because their hearts and minds and spirits have been starved for our liberating message. They tell us they thought they were crazy until they found our church. In towns and cities and homes and store fronts all across our nation we gather, quite simply to be a support to one another, and more deeply to touch the heart and to remind again, be reminded again of what Mary Oliver calls “our place in the family of things”.

I stand before you today because I believe that our task remains always new and always eternal: to build the church that shall be free. We sang it at merger, it’s what we said we would do together. Assuming we meant it then and aspire to it even today, it will require – and incidentally, this is what we tell new members – it will require that we each find our own center of strength, that would be a regular spiritual practice.

That we each are present in church or in our congregational life, that we become part of what goes on in our congregations. That we live in the expectation that we will be changed, because we will be changed if we engage ourselves in our congregations and in our associational life. That we will embody the spirit of generosity – and that doesn’t mean the rich, it means everybody with open heart and open mind and allowing the other space to exist (and maybe it means a little bit about money), that we will find ways to serve others.

This is what we expect of our new members, that they will engage seriously in service, in opportunities that we provide at the church and in the larger community.

I stand before you tonight because I know there is a liberating power, which can be awakened in a 22 year old young adult raised as a fundamentalist Christian.

A power, which in a simple signing of a membership book in a Unitarian Universalist church bound her to truths she had yet to even imagine. A power of heart and mind, which caused her to realize she didn’t want to marry a minister, she wanted to be one.

A power, which said, she had a voice when she had never even heard it take form.

A power, which helped her stay steady through all the usual difficulties and blessings of a long ministry.

A power embodied in the people who blessed her life and liberated her from fear of that fundamentalist upbringing.

In this I speak of my own liberation, and also of the power of the free spirit to bind all our hearts to love, our hands to service, and our minds to truth. It is this power that brings me here tonight in this place before you. I will be a president first in the skills and values, which will make our faith vital and effective in the new world before us. I will be a president of deep and abiding faith in that free spirit to liberate even us from the ways we sometimes make our faith too small.

When I am president I will remember that 22 year old woman who was lost until she found our faith with its liberating word, and its call to justice, and hope. I won’t forget the young people who come to us now, needing that same liberating word. I will remember the voice on a call-in radio show from a small rural town in Texas, of a man who tentatively asked me if we were really a church where a gay man would be welcome. He said it in total disbelief.

I won’t forget those who still need to hear of our bold welcome.

I will remember the African-American woman who always made a habit of reading the entry in the encyclopedia before and after anything that she looked up, and found the entry on Unitarian Universalism that way. As she drove toward our church the next Sunday she became increasingly anxious about our location. She said to herself if these people are who they say they are – in the encyclopedia – it will be all right. She has been an active member of our congregation now for 20 years. I won’t forget all the others who haven’t found us yet, and I will make sure it’s all right when they come.

I bring with me to the presidency of the UUA the lives of the people, the hopes of generations, the hard work of building free congregations along with great hopes and expectations for our future.

I ask you to elect me as your president and then commit yourselves as I am committed to reclaim the tradition which liberated us and blessed our lives and to recommit ourselves to the many people who still need our saving message: the people living lives of quiet desperation in our midst, the children who need our wise teachings as they grow, and the cause of liberation where ever the structures of society bind the mind, the body, and the hearts of people everywhere – they need us, and they need us desperately.

The last stanza of the hymn we sang at merger proclaims:

“Prophetic church, the future waits your liberating ministry, go forward in the power of love, proclaim the truth that makes us free.”

As the senior minister of one of our largest churches, one which has doubled its membership, doubled its religious education programming and raised our budget almost ten times what it was when I began, I bring experience and institutional know-how to help us be agile and responsible and responsive and prudent as an association.

At the same time I bring a lifetime of spiritual work. Some of you are familiar with ‘Living by Heart’ practice, which I learned from my mentor, Harry Scholefield. Harry used the memorization of poetry and prose as a mantra for his spiritual practice and nourishment for his soul. I know we are a people who seek religious depth and have found this to be a vehicle for that depth, which goes beyond the usual theological categories which sometimes trip us up.

As your president I will wed my expectations of leadership with spiritual depth so that as we live in the world we can live so effectively and also as faithful agents and courageous, transformative agents in the world. The future is in our liberating ministry, I am fully prepared to lead the UUA as we move into that future together.

(Rev. Hallman read her manuscript.)